Forthcoming in: Routledge Handbook of the Global 1960s. Chen Jian, Martin Klimke, Masha Kirasirova, Mary Nolan, Marilyn Young, Joanna Waley-Cohen, eds. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018. THE MEANINGS OF WESTERN MAOISM IN THE GLOBAL 1960S Quinn Slobodian It felt strange to stand there shouting for democracy in the great country that had once been our Jerusalem, where the sun no longer rose in the east for anyone but those who lived there. -Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time, 2010 1 Those guys, they loved the Soviet Union, and we thought we loved China, OK, it was a bit more complicated than that, but I don’t want to get into it. -Olivier Rolin, Paper Tiger, 2002 2 In November 2013, a man and his wife were arrested in South London for confining three women against their will. It soon emerged that the accusers and the accused constituted the rump membership of a miniscule Maoist sect called “The Worker’s Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought” formed in the 1970s. Peaking at a couple of dozen adherents, the group had led a long and miserable afterlife in a prison-like flat with a history of abuse and unexplained deaths. 3 The group’s leader was Aravindan Balakrishnan, better known as “Comrade Bala,” who was sentenced in 2016 to 23 years in prison for his crimes. The case made a minor splash in the domestic and international press and offered some a chance to reflect on the history of radicalism writ large. Some framed it as a return of the repressed. An Irish journalist wrote “that Maoist collective in London is a reminder of just how extreme and dehumanizing left- 1 Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2010), 57. 2 Olivier Rolin, Paper Tiger (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 23. 3 Katrin Bennhold, "In London 'Slaves' Case, 3 Women Isolated Under a Maoist Guru's Sway," New York Times Nov 30, 2013.